Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)

I commend Deputy Marie Sherlock on proposing this important motion and pay tribute to our colleague, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin MEP, who has led on decriminalisation for so long. I welcome campaigners and students to the Public Gallery and I thank them for their support on this.

It is three years since Labour brought forward a motion on decriminalisation in November 2022. The Government’s response then was to give it time. It has had lots of time – three years. In that time, 30,000 people will have been arrested for personal drug use. We have seen thousands of overdoses, hundreds of deaths and families, communities and individuals behind those figures, trapped in cycles of addiction and stigma.

I practised as a criminal defence barrister for many years. I represented people who were charged and prosecuted for possession of small quantities of drugs. That experience convinced me our system is broken. People are stigmatised and not supported through addiction and people's lives have been changed irrevocably by criminalisation and yet the last major policy breakthrough was brought about when Aodhán Ó Ríordáin was Minister and who successfully legislated for safe consumption areas. The long-promised first medically supervised injecting centre finally opened in December 2024 in Dublin, nearly a decade after Aodhán’s initiative. However, as our new motion notes, no further progress has been made on additional safe consumption spaces or on a change in policy. Yet, more and more people are seeking treatment for problem drug use, new synthetic substances are emerging and the 2024 European Drug Report shows Ireland’s rate of drug deaths is among the very highest in the EU.

We need change and we need an evidence-based policy. We need to look at other countries like Portugal where they redirected users from the courts to the health services and reduced overdose deaths. We need to look at the blueprint for reform offered in this motion. We call for a dedicated Cabinet committee on drugs use, for a comprehensive health-led response to possession and, crucially, for the decriminalisation of people found with drugs for personal use through repeal of section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1997. We want to see funding for harm-reduction services and genuine involvement of people with lived experience.

These are not radical ideas; they are the natural continuation of what health experts, families and communities affected have been saying for decades. Our healthcare system already embraces elements of harm reduction, so we need to move our criminal justice system. On the one hand, the State acknowledges the illness of addiction but on the other hand endorses sending people to prisons where drug use is rife. We are telling people to use safely on the one hand and then criminalising them for doing so on the other.

Decriminalisation is about saving lives. The Government’s response was that we should wait. We have waited long enough. It is time to act on the evidence and change the law; healthcare, not handcuffs.

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